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About this project

The FAILPOLLEN is a collaborative effort to compile and disseminate negative findings in pollen analysis from archaeological and paleoenvironmental contexts.

While positive results dominate scientific publications, negative outcomes—such as the absence of pollen, contamination, or insufficient preservation—are rarely shared. This omission creates publication bias and hinders reproducibility. By documenting and organizing these results, our project fosters transparency, reduces redundant work, and supports better-informed sampling strategies.

In biomedical and experimental sciences, a negative result typically indicates the absence of a measurable effect. In palaeopalynology, however, a negative result is usually a record of non-productivity: a failure to recover a usable pollen signal due to environmental, taphonomic, sampling, or analytical constraints. Negative results in this field do not usually mean the refutation of a hypothesis in the experimental sense. The absence of recoverable pollen does not mean the absence of past vegetation, nor does it render a site devoid of palaeoenvironmental value. Instead, it is a scientifically relevant observation about proxy recoverability, archive suitability, and methodological limits.

The initiative is inspired by open science principles and the growing recognition of the value of negative data across disciplines, including archaeology and the natural sciences. We aim to serve researchers, students, heritage managers, and the broader scientific community.


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Lead Coordinators

Technical Secretariat